Who are your top five living authors?

so am i except for the manic pixie girl, and i wouldn't really use the words quirky or melancholic, and the protag is not based on me at all

otherwise it checks out

I haven't read anything by a living author.

Manic pixie girl seems like a really vague trope to me, its one I'd like to avoid but feel like any female love interest can be labeled one with enough reaching

I don't read modern literary fiction, so feel free to have your autism triggered by my list.

Stephen King
J.K. Rowling
Tad Williams
China Mieville
S.E. Hinton

laszlo krasznahorkai
kazuo ishiguro
thomas pynchon
cormac mccarthy
don delillo

I think it's only a manic pixie if theyre the key in solving all the protagonist's problems. She's less of a character and more of a plot device in that regard. But yeah its a pretty vague term, especially since its easy for any girl to fall into that category if the story is centered around romance.

King, Crichton, Hobb, Martin, and Rothfuss

I'm interested to see what people say in this thread because Veeky Forums either doesn't read many living authors or doesn't talk about them.

Margaret Atwood
Salman Rushdie
Orhan Pamuk
Yann Martel
Aravind Adiga

I also really loved "The Gargoyle" by Andrew Davidson but since he hasn't written anything else I don't really want to list him.

I feel like I should read more American lit.

Sadly, Alistair McLeod and Umberto Eco both died recently or I would have put them down.

>Tfw everyone I've ever truly admired or identified with died at least one century ago

I tried to read Rushdie's book that landed him a bounty, forgot the title. Couldn't get past the first chapter. So boring.

The Satanic Verses? If you didn't like the first chapter then you probably made the right choice putting it down. His style isn't for everyone, he goes really heavy on the details of setting and some people don't care for that.

Yeah, that one. I really wanted to see for myself why the muzzies hate him.

Later chapters include the story of the Prophet Muhammad. And the story describes him fraudulently putting his own words into the Koran that were not divinely inspired, which were later removed because they were deemed "satanic verses." That's why it became controversial. It's still a really interesting novel and a lot of Muslims actually like it.

This is Norwegian wood tbqh didn't know Murakami was white

Nuh uh, it's Hesse's Steppenwolf.

>I feel like I should read more American lit.
don't.

Mine would be something like
David Markson
Toni Morrison
Kazuo Ishiguro
Ursula Le Guin
Ama Ata Aidoo

And yeah I realize I just named three American writers

>Gary Shipley
>Pynchon (he's going to die soon)
>McCarthy (as above)
>Reza Negarestani
>Blake Butler

But I'll admit I don't know much about contemporary Veeky Forums, especially in my own country, which would be a shame if it wasn't for the fact I've yet to see something worthwhile getting published. Fuck them all.

Honorable Mentions (died in the last twenty years)
>Terry Pratchett
>Burroughs
>Hunter Thompson
>Terry Pratchett

If you want to get into contemporary lit, a good start is to find an awards committee with good taste and read the stuff they like. Booker and Nobel winners tend to be promising.

In no particular order

Pynchon, Auster, DeLilo, Gass, Eugenidies (sp?)

Is Thomas Pynchon the Neutral Milk Hotel of Veeky Forums?

Let's see if I can find five living authors I've actually read:

J.M. Coetzee
Stig Larsson (not Stieg Larsson).
Wladimir Kaminer
Jonas Gardell
Yu Hua

No. That'd be DFW, McElroy, or Gass. DFW is probably the most Neutral Milk Hotel-like author in general since he comes from around the same time period and embraced similar values before killing himself in 2008.

You didn't do very well on your SATs, did you user?

I'm not an American, I did a test designed for humans

I did well enough for Columbia to interview me. I didn't actually want to go there though, so I never finished the application process.

>Me
>4 other clowns. Who cares. Nobody's written anything good since Faulkner anyway.

"white male", you already failed in life and will be hated till the day you die, unless you claim gay.

Pynchon
Delillo
McElroy
Gass
DFW

Yann Martel
J.M. Coetzee
Hanif Kurashi
Sulman Rushdie
Michael Ondaatje

>nobody realized he fucked up two of those names

Your list is my list except sub Ishiguro for Denis Johnson

It wouldn't be McElroy or Gass as they are amazing and are only memes on here because nobody reads them save a couple. DFW maybe

(You)

I don't know of a single book that fits that description desu

Sorry user, I can never be bothered with accents and carons and stuff. I'd have to copy/paste the names since I don't know the keyboard shortcuts.

No, I mean like, it's Laszlo Krasznahorkai

Sick burn! You must be from 'straya.

probably the YA women read and buy up in droves

Thomas Pynchon
Indra Sinha
Cathy Park Hong
Jennifer Egan
William Gibson

Mark Leyner
George Saunders
Irvine Welsh
Bachem Macuno
Sam Lipsyte

>Pynchon is your favourite modern author
>your stunted half-teen years of video games and lonely masturbation left you with a gaping black hole to fill
>only read old classics now to better understand the canon and where it leads
>Pynchon will die soon
>your closest link to modernity is The Times, which you don't even read at breakfast anymore
>haven't even started Infinite Jest, or, Christ forbid, Tai Pei
>feel little desire to read anything of the past few decades, which is only snowballed by my purposefully little knowledge of what has been written to better preserve my innocence as I grapple with the past and coming present

Am I an ass?

But that's what I put, user...

>Laszlo Krasznahorkai,

Are you anons Canadian or is Canadian lit just really popular here?

Yep

Pynchon
Saunders
Delillo
Chabon
Roth

Based Vollman. I wish he'd put out books that aren't 150000 pages. Don't have time for that.